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In 2012, like many other young Black activists of this time, I was struck by the murder of Trayvon Martin, but even more so by the non-indictment of his murderer. I was living in Miami during this time, and I joined Dream Defenders and became an organizer dedicated to student organizing, feminist politic, and liberatory strategies.

My dedication led me to building the Durham chapter of BYP100, and contributing to the growth of my political home. BYP100 is where I constantly see small slithers of liberation. From our Black Joy Experience to our campaigns to Decriminalize Sex Work.

As National Co-Director of BYP100, I am excited to bring the freedom dreams from my childhood to life. I will pull on the care and strategy of Ella Baker, and the fight and audacity of Marsha P. Johnson. I am a commitment to water my ancestors with the courage of future generations. My hope is that BYP100 continues to grow in right alignment with our potential. That we continue to design our freedom. And that YOU continue to support our care, strategy, fight, audacity, courage, and the freedom dreams we’ve always had.

In Black love,
D’atra Jackson
National Co-Director of BYP100

When I joined BYP100’s Chicago Chapter in January of 2014, I didn’t know the first thing about developing a campaign, planning a direct action, or even facilitating an effective meeting. I was really wet behind the ears, y’all! But I did have my lived experience. From my first protest at the South Carolina statehouse to demand the takedown of the confederate flag at 9 years old, to struggling through familial incarceration, to surviving domestic violence – I’ve had a long-burning fire to build a different kind of world. I just wasn’t always clear on how to do that. So when I found BYP100, a budding organization of young Black people dedicated to our collective liberation, I was more than ready.

The past five years has been such a rich journey, and every step has prepared me for this moment in our organizational history. True to our core values and in the tradition of Ella Baker, people like Charlene Carruthers and many others invested in my leadership. Today, I’m deeply honored and privileged to enter the role of National Co-Director for an organization that has been such an impactful force in my life and the movement for Black liberation.

As National Co-Director, I am a commitment to growing and sustaining a leader-full political home for young Black people through love, rigor, discipline, and trust; I am a commitment to making our Freedom Forecast a reality; I am a commitment to manifesting my ancestors’ wildest freedom dreams. I hope that I can rely on your continued support.

We look forward to building with you in 2019,Janaé BonsuBYP100 National Co-Director

We shared the news about plans to transition from my role as BYP100 National Director just a few months ago. I’m still overwhelmed by the support and affirmations about my leadership and the strength of our organization. We just celebrated five whole years on July 13th right here in Chicago, and we are headed towards a collective North Stars of Black liberation.

It is now my honor to announce two new BYP100 Co-Directors, D’atra Jackson (Durham, NC) and Janae Bonsu (Chicago, IL). I hold deep respect of both comrades. I’ve seen them work and engage in struggle in generative and inspiring ways. I have full confidence that they will lead BYP100 with integrity, rigor and discipline.

Janaé Bonsu (she/her) is a Black queer feminist abolitionist from Columbia, SC by way of Brooklyn, NY. She attended the University of South Carolina where she received a bachelor’s degree in psychology and criminal justice. After graduating, she went on to work in social policy research at a NYC-based think tank until deciding to pursue a master’s degree in social work at the University of Chicago. While in Chicago, Janaé was among the first group of people to join BYP100 after the organization’s founding with little experience in social justice work. Since joining, Janaé has demonstrated a commitment to building organizational capacity and carrying major campaign, public policy, and direct-action projects to completion. She spent two years in chapter leadership before joining BYP100’s staff in 2016 as National Public Policy Chair. BYP100 became her first political home where she lives and builds today. Janaé currently serves on the board of directors at mRelief and Action Center on Race & the Economy (ACRE). She is a PhD candidate whose research focuses on state violence and Black women’s agency in their safety beyond policing. She is also a Pisces sun/Cancer moon/Sagittarius rising who loves to cook.

D’atra “Dee Dee” Jackson (she/her) is an organizer, trainer, big sister, and godmother of four. Born and raised in Southwest Philly, she moved to Durham from Miami. She attended Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, the oldest historically black institution for higher learning, where she obtained her B.S. in Recreation & Leisure Management, and Florida International University to obtain her Masters in Recreation and Sports Management. While attending FIU, she became active at the height of the murder of Trayvon Martin and Zimmerman verdict with an organization called Dream Defenders, founding the FIU chapter. Dee Dee is a trainer, leader, and respected party thrower here in Durham. She is currently the Co-Director of Ignite NC, which works with mostly Black, mostly queer, young organizers across to state to shift the culture of organizing in North Carolina. She is also Co-Founder of the Durham Chapter of Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100). Dee Dee has had her hand in efforts and actions such as bringing Participatory Budgeting to Durham, #DurhamBeyondPolicing, Justice for Reefa campaign, Black Mama’s/Black August Bail Outs, and some that shouldn’t be named. She is also an aspiring movement DJ, named DJ MerQueen Gangsta for the Revolution. She is moving through the world with Libra sun, Aquarius rising, and Taurus moon.

My request to our broader community is to support them as they take on the task of leading BYP100 into the next five years of Black liberation work. They are both strong leaders, not mules — so if you know them, check in ways that feel supportive to them. They can not do it alone. While Janae and Dee Dee are joining a team of extremely talented staff members, our staff will need your support too. Change is happening in so many places, so please be mindful of that as our team moves through this transition in healthy and principled ways.

I will reach out to key partners to build relationship bridges — but don’t hesitate to reach out to our incoming co-directors directly after they come on board in October.

Sex work, drugs, gangs, etc. are all mostly created by systems of poverty that drive marginalized and underprivileged people in situations where they have to take action in order to survive. Mostly fueled by self-determination, folks engage in work that isn’t necessarily legally protected to make sure that they can afford the means of survival that they need. These economies don’t just pop up out of the blue – they are systemically produced by white supremacy and capitalism that leaves little to no means to thrive for Black and Brown folks. So gangs are most certainly a product of centuries-long racist practices.

There is a MAJOR lack of opportunities and resources for folks living on Chicago’s south and west sides. Especially in cities like Chicago where $4 million a day is allocated towards policing meanwhile schools are closed by the dozens, mental health facilities are virtually non-existent, and community members have to fight to have a trauma center built nearby. This failure to invest in the community and provide folks with essential and progressive resources leads to a stripping away of folks’ self-determination, dignity, and value of their own humanity – where life becomes a dehumanizing struggle to just make ends meet and feel seen in the world. When Black folks are forced to even fight for their own humanity, ideologically, that becomes the most precious virtue of all. And so folks will fight for that… will kill for that. Because they aren’t given anything else. They aren’t given the opportunity to see outside of trying to be seen. Black men aren’t allowed to live outside of the confines of masculinity as defined through toxic and dehumanizing lenses. Black women aren’t allowed to see themselves as more than the sum of their parts. And so gangs and violence in general in our communities can largely be attributed to the lack of value and humanity that Black folks are afforded in this country. When you have to fight for a trauma center, what does that tell you?

Police have been trying to “solve” gang-related crimes for decades to no avail. Their consistent attempts to “thwart crime” has just been attacks on Black and Brown communities – shuttling folks through the prison system, separating families, targeting and harassing community members, etc. The two approaches – 1. broken windows policing where you get people for petty crimes to try to stop larger crimes/get the smaller man or 2. chop down the big men at the top. Neither work because the former leads to very racialized policing that’s ineffective and dehumanizing and the latter has just created a chaotic, unorganized structure that has dismantled communal groups and leads to smaller, more stratified networks of gangs. Regardless of what police do, gangs will exist and violence will prevail as long as the systems continue to operate in the ways that they do to contribute to points one and two. Police will not free us nor will they protect us. And their consistent leeching of city budgets for ineffective and highly discriminatory practices to continue to dehumanize Black and Brown folks as opposed to those funds sustaining the communities will continue to perpetuate harmful conditions for our people.

So we ask, who is actually killing who? This is why we do the work that we do? None of this is Black and white (lol it is but it ain’t) and it is our duty to expose and thwart the covertness of anti-Black oppression.

Let us know what you think! What are effective ways to address this violence within our communities?

When laws and legislation are built in this country they almost always criminalize, disenfranchise, and dismantle the self-determination of Black and Brown folks; Even the very few of those laws that are designed with good intentions. Because the foundation of governance and American political power is violently predicated on anti-Blackness, white-supremacy, and colonialism, these laws always turn into some form of policing of marginalized communities. This is also the case for gun control legislation.

In thinking about the Anti-Violence movement of the 80’s and 90’s, we find that it was largely led by radical feminists who were sure that they were making the right political decisions in that moment. As the Anti-Violence movement gained more mainstream support, the politics lost its radical and intersectional rigor. When the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was produced in 1994, from decades of feminist labor, it lacked a critical understanding of how race and class would intersect with gender-based oppression, and it had no solutions that accounted for the expansiveness of sexuality, and the endless possibilities of gender combinations within intimate partnerships outside of traditional binaries. The legislation detailed in VAWA disproportionately criminalized Black and Brown intimate partnerships and Black women were disproportionately forced into more police interactions which built a pipeline to incarceration.

When we talk about gun violence policy, especially in response to school shootings, we’re often talking about mandatory minimum sentencing, more police and security presence in schools, and background checks for those seeking to buy a gun. So even when those fighting for an end to the culture of violence in America have the best intentions, Black and Brown folks will most likely be the ones to experience violence at the hands of the state as a result, gun or not. Because history shows the state does not view white men with AR-15’s as the main source of violence in America, Black folks, People of Color, Muslim folks, and those surviving extreme poverty have been socially positioned as the most violent in America. In 1996 Hillary Clinton called young Black people “Superpredators”, and in 2017 Donald Trump called young Black people fighting for self-determination “Black Identity Extremists”.

Mandatory Minimum Sentencing for the unlawful possession of a firearm profoundly contributes to the cycle of violence that is the prison industrial complex. When we build any type of legislation, we have to keep in mind that it is within the context of the Prison Industrial Complex. 80 Percent of the folks in prison are there for offenses that were caused by extreme poverty. Meaning most of the people caught carrying a weapon are carrying it because they’ve been pushed out of school and had their education stolen from them. They as well as their families are facing extreme hardship. They are now forced to sustain themselves and their families on a practice within the street economy and carry gun to survive and protect themselves within the work they engage in. They are incarcerated ultimately because of the equipment they chose to use to survive in an environment of extreme poverty that they were forced into under Capitalism. After a cruel and ridiculous amount of time incarcerated, if and when they return to their communities, they will be denied access to public assistance, and denied entry to public housing. Cities have not yet made a concerted effort at divesting from prisons and policing and investing in economic justice programs, and political projects that will revitalize the communities of marginalized peoples. So our people are now forced into the cycle of returning to the strategy of survival again and most often being incarcerated repeatedly.

Zero-Tolerance policy (which was created in response to the Columbine Shooting) was another effort to solve the violence of school shootings. It was intended to be a set of policies that would keep students safe across the country, but turned into a strategy for schools to push out “troublesome” students, forcing them into the school to prison pipeline. The students that were disproportionately impacted by these violent laws were Black and Brown.

Whilst organizing with highschool students on the southside of Chicago, it was appalling to find out that Orr, a public High School, had a police processing center and holding cells in the basement of the school. Which meant when students got into an altercation, or any kind of trouble that involved harm in the school, instead of getting detention, or a parent teacher conference, like most students in this country, they were being processed by police and pushed into the juvenile detention center. Police inside of schools do not make students safer, police and high security presence in schools actually cultivate an increasingly hostile environment for schools to learn within.

Background checks for buying a gun

The current national conversation around gun violence connected to the tragic shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida last month must not be divorced from the broader legacy, reality, and culture of violence in the United States. As a country that was built on violent theft of land and the violent institution of chattel slavery, the U.S. is still a place where violence is very much a part of the fabric of everyday life and the logic we are taught to use to understand the world. Routine violence, in the form of policing, incarceration, brutal economic inequity, and racialized resource deprivation of marginalized communities, is so deep-seated and normalized that it tends to not even be acknowledged as violence at all in the mainstream. In contrast, violence that disrupts popular notions of what is normal (like a shooting at a predominantly wealthy and white school), even when those forms of violence are more rare than “normal” violence, become central in conversations about addressing violence.This point is not made to minimize the very real violence experienced by students, teachers, workers, and others who have been victim to a school shooting or other mass shooting. However, it is important to name the broader culture of violence in order to understand the conditions that lead to this kind of violent event. Specifically, because part of the culture around violence is the imbalance of what gets noticed, what gets considered violence, and what gets responded to, we must be particularly intentional about looking at the big picture so that the solutions we look to don’t reinforce this problem. For example, without putting school shooting in context of structural and state violence that impact marginalized communities, solutions may seem to address the problem of school shooting but increase the less visible violence being done to people at the margins.Ultimately, the problem here is twofold. 1) There is an incredible amount of violence in our society 2) The mainstream public understands the vast majority of violence that happens in our society to be normal, or doesn’t consider it to be violence at all.

Since the emergence of the Movement for Black Lives in 2014, there have been constant attacks on those speaking out with attempts to delegitimize the countless experiences that Black people have when it comes to state-sanctioned violence. These coordinated efforts deflect from the work needed to make Black lives matter in this country. One way we’ve seen this happen is through so-called “Blue Lives Matter” bills/laws, or more appropriately the “Bluest Lie” that is being told across the country.

At this very moment, three bills are before the Michigan State Senate Judiciary Committee for a vote. HB 4585 and 4590 will ascribe federal penalties to those who have committed a crime against someone who is or is perceived to be emergency personnel, including police officers, on or off duty. HB 4591 allows up to three years of prison time to be added to the sentences of those found guilty of these charges.

Blue Lives Matter legislation is not new

The first proposals popped up in early 2016 coincidentally after the mass mobilizations of Black folks in light of the murders of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Laquan McDonald, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, and Sandra Bland. And even more began to arise after the increased momentum of the Movement for Black Lives following the murders of Korryn Gaines, Alton Sterling, and Philando Castile. To this day, at least 14 states have active Blue Lives Matter legislation on the books haunting our communities. These policies attempt to put police officers in a protected class, similar to what we see with hate crimes against members of historically marginalized groups based on race, gender identity, and sexual orientation.

As a response to folks taking to the streets, mobilizing communities, and conveying a vision for what safety looks like for us – elected officials have pushed even more protections for the uniform and aggression against us; The same police uniform that many Black people see on folks who are harassing, assaulting, and even worse, killing them; The uniforms worn by police officers who killed 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones and those who beat Floyd Dent nearly to death.

BYP100 began fighting back against Blue Lives Matter policies in 2016. We mobilized against them in Louisiana, we defeated them in Chicago, and now we see them in Michigan. The enactment of a Blue Lives Matter Bill punishes those who speak out against injustices by the police, infringes on our 1st amendment rights of free speech and assembly, and funnels more Black folks into the criminal (in)justice system. This sort of legislation is weaponized against our community to further criminalize and oppress our people and shuttle more and more folks through the prison industrial complex.

This is just the latest attack on the Movement for Black Lives.

Creating a “crisis” through unsubstantiated narratives or insidious interventions is not new for the US Government. In the 1980’s the government strategically introduced narcotics into our communities to destabilize, criminalize, and incarcerate us to fill prisons. These bills are less about safety and more about expanding unjust, punitive forms of punishment.

The urgency to act against Michigan’s proposed bill is now. The bill impacts our ability as activists and community members to hold police officers accountable through free speech and protest. If you’re in Michigan, call your state senator and tell them to reject these bills (HB 4585, 4590, & 4591). It’s past time for officials to start taking actions for Black Lives and not continue to commit violence against them. Our silence should not be the requirement for our safety.

We know that Friday, January 20th was a rough one, but we just want to remind you that we love you and we got your back. We can’t downplay the current political moment and will not promise that you won’t feel the impact of this administration. But what we can promise is that we will be beside you, hand in hand in the name of Black resilience, fighting for Black liberation and defending Black joy every step of the way.

We know that the future looks and feels deeply uncertain, but it is exactly in moments like this that we call forth the resilience and vision of freedom of our ancestors. In the darkness, Black love has always been the light that has led us to liberation.

Whatever you are feeling — fear, anxiety, anger — it is all real and valid. But all is not lost. And while the road ahead will be long and difficult, we are everything we need to build a future that is radically inclusive, just and liberatory for all Black people.

Beneath the language of “equality” and “freedom” and beneath the illusion of democracy, we must remember that this nation was founded on genocide and slavery. Trump is obsessed with building a bigger “law and order” system – the same system that has destroyed our communities, locked millions of us up and fails to keep us safe. Trump also uses divide and conquer tactics to pit Black people against Latinx immigrants, despite the fact that Black immigrants are among the most targeted. But as Audre Lorde reminds us: “By seeing who the we is, we learn to use our energies with greater precision against our enemies rather than against ourselves.” We must, and can, keep each other safe.

With Trump as president, the opportunities for resistance are more plentiful than ever. Under a neofascist administration, we can expect to see hypernationalism, criminalizing dissent, mobilizing hate against particular groups of people (like racial/ethnic minorities, immigrants, communists, etc.), supremacy of the military, rampant sexism, controlled media, and suppressed labor power. We saw our comrades are on the front lines in the Capitol yesterday pushing back against the incoming neofascist administration because we know that in these times, we can’t afford to retreat. We have to double down, supporting and protecting each other along the way.

In this moment, Black people, it is just as important that you treat yourself and each other with the grace, gentleness, love, and compassion that this country has always denied us. This means doing things and being with the people who make you happy. Cultivating Black joy will be instrumental to developing the resilience needed to fight another day. Nurture your physical and spiritual self – however that looks. Go to the grocery store, grab your water, incense, some live food, turmeric, garlic, local honey, some lavender, some sage, and some palo santos. Get some whatever you may need in case you decide not to leave the house or your body just needs to be still.

We hope that in the coming days, you are able to find joy, see yourself reflected in other beautiful black faces, be with your people, and get the opportunity to check in with your body.

We are divinely ordered and prepared to hammer through whatever comes at us. Our ancestors move through us and within us to let us know that we are not alone and that we are not losing. Take comfort in your family and community – both blood and chosen. Hold tight to each other, ‘cause we are all we got.

Loving each other, holding each other, caring for each other in a world that seeks to destroy us — These are the most powerful acts of resistance we can practice.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released a report with findings from a year-long investigation into the Chicago Police Department (CPD), but no findings come as a surprise to the many Black and Brown Chicagoans who live with the daily consequences of CPD’s actions. But the DOJ’s findings do point to a need for real police accountability, divestment from police, and investment in the communities most affected by police misconduct.

The DOJ reported that CPD not only has a long history of unconstitutional patterns of use of force, but that current accountability measures are not enough. Police union contracts allow these unjust practices to continue unchecked and it’s time for the City of Chicago and the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) to change that. “We can’t trust the DOJ under the incoming Trump administration to monitor any changes in the CPD,” says Janaé Bonsu, National Public Policy Chair of BYP100. “Police accountability should start with the Chicago City Council and Mayor making sure that this year’s FOP contract isn’t approved without changes that stop the city from letting cops get away with murder, brutality, and harassment.” The current contract makes it too easy for officers to lie, too hard for them to be investigated, and too hard for people to complain. It also doesn’t hold officers who have been found guilty of misconduct financially responsible, and Chicagoans have paid over $210 million dollars in settlement money over four years alone. Officers should be required to carry liability insurance for misconduct claims, and other provisions in the contract that allow officers to disregard Black lives must be eliminated.

But making Chicago safe for all residents must go beyond accountability after police misconduct has already happened. More police, and even more training does not make us safer. The DOJ report is just more evidence that the City of Chicago needs to stop rewarding CPD with salary increases and more hiring. As Maxx Boykin, Organizing Co-Chair of BYP100 Chicago says, “The best solution I see out of this report is to reallocate CPD funds in order to support the communities most impacted by their terror.” This means less cops, more social services, better public schools, and more affordable housing in Black communities. In the face of DOJ’s findings, our commitment and demand to #StopTheCops and #FundBlackFutures remains unchanged.

BYP100 NYC and Million Hoodies NYC chapter are currently locking down the Lower Manhattan headquarters of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association to demand the immediate firing of Officer Wayne Isaacs and to call attention to the multiple institutions that hamper police accountability in the city.

“The police are trying to manipulate the conversation. They are trying to manipulate all of us into believing that they are at risk. They are not at risk. Police officers are the threat. Police do not keep us safe. Police do not protect us. They are the danger that keeps Black people unsafe. We met divest from institutions that do not value us and instead invest in Black communities.” – Rahel Mekdim Teka, BYP100 NYC Organizing Chair

BYP100 and BLM DC join with the Movement for Black Lives demanding divestment from policing and calling for #FreedomNow. Livestream here –> http://byp100.org/breakingdcfopshutdown/

Washington, D.C. – On July 20, 2016, BYP100 DC and other local Black organizers have occupied the Legislative Office of the National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) to demand that police officers invested in accountability and justice stop paying dues to the FOP, a private police union that protects officers – including those who kill and maim civilians – by ensuring they are paid administrative leave while under investigation, maintain their jobs, and are not charged or acquitted of wrongdoing.

In a centuries long battle for self determination and freedom from anti-Black, marginalizing systems, Black people have fallen victim to targeting, policing, and murder at the hands of the state – specifically, the police. It is time that the state pours into our communities to create better systems of support for our people and not into anti-Black institutions that have perpetually filed us. As articulated in our economic justice platform, the Agenda to Build Black Futures, “America’s economic system has systematically failed Black communities for whole lifetimes with discriminatory policies; investment in policing, surveillance, incarceration; and chronic underinvestment in our livelihood.” Racial justice is economic justice and ensuring that our government divests from violent, criminal institutions and invests in quality services for our people is one step towards our imagined vision towards liberation.

“The FOP acts like a college fraternity and is responsible for maintaining the harmful, lethal, unethical, and unaccountable culture of policing while the families and communities impacted when officers brutalize civilians are left to mourn with little, if any, semblance of justice. Just like college frats that further rape culture by closing ranks to protect members who are sexual assailants, the FOP has proven that their primary commitment is to protect the worst of their members behind the ‘Blue Wall of Silence’ – even in the most heinous of circumstances. The FOP is the most dangerous fraternity in America and they need to be stopped,” remarks Clarise McCants, BYP100 DC Organizer.

In this moment where “AllLivesMatter” has been disrespectfully used to invalidate and undermine our movement, we observe the ways in which “BluelivesMatter” functions similarly. Where “blue lives” are representative of the carceral state and the uncapped power of this system to continue to devour and consume our people at insurmountable rates. All this without fear of being called to heel in light of legislation and ordinances that demonize dissent or calls for transformation. Our organizers have been actively engaged in campaigns to resist “BlueLivesMatter” legislation such as HB-953 that was passed in Louisiana as well as one ordinance pending in Chicago.

“Young Black people are leading mobilizations and direct action around the country because we are not safe and there are currently no sufficient pathways offererd by the state for us to voice our needs. We have to take the initiative to insert our own voices in a conversation that impacts our lives because that right has unfortunately not been afforded to us,” says Asha Rosa, BYP100 Organizing Chair.

In 2015, it has been documented that 258 Black people have died at the hands of the police with the vast majority being between the ages of 18 and 29. We are under attack. We are living in a state of emergency and it is imperative that we do not become complacent. Police violence is not random – it is an organized system of control that is well funded, resourced, and backed by institutions that do not have the safety and protection of Black people in their interests. The Department of Justice has allotted a 2017 budget of $4.7 billion towards grants to local police departments when that money would be best used as a reinvestment into education, employment, health, housing, and restorative justice services in Black communities. Stop the cops and #FundBlackFutures!

“Now is the time to commit to building a world where we deal with harm and conflict without police and prisons. We are organizing – fueled by our righteous anger and radical love for Black people – demand a better future where the economy prioritizes cooperative economics over capitalism, where we are all safe, and where we are all healthy and free.” – Charlene Carruthers, BYP100 National Director

We will not stop until our demands are met:

We demand the immediate defunding of police departments and divestment from a system that criminalizes and incarcerates our people at the local, state, and federal level and a direct investment into education, health, and housing of our people

We demand investments that promote the economic stability of our community control over institutions that are meant to serve us

We demand prompt and efficient movement on legislation passed that will work towards achieving our vision of Black safety and stability

We will be mobilizing in conjunction with the Movement for Black Lives – a coalition between BYP100, Black Lives Matter Network, Project South, Blackout Collective, Million Hoodies Movement for Justice, and many other Black racial justice organizations. We are committed to engaging in this work in our local communities across the nation and will keep you posted on any further developments.

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BYP 100 is an activist member-based organization of Black 18-35 year olds, dedicated to creating justice and freedom for all Black people. We do our work through a Black queer feminist lens.

BYP100 is committed to the long-term struggle for Black liberation, human dignity, and transformative justice. As our people – Black men, women, girls, femmes, and folks of all or no gender alike – are slaughtered in our streets by the hands of police and killed slowly and quietly by other means of state violence, we continue the push to build power within our communities.

We understand non-violence as one tactic in long-term strategy to achieve Black liberation, not as an inherent value. In order to actualize an abolitionist future we will have to come into direct confrontation with the police state.

However, the Dallas community and our broader movement are now dealing with the aftermath of a type of violence well-known in America. We must hold how everyday people who showed up to call for justice were unjustly placed in the path of danger. This reminds us that safety is never guaranteed. The incidents that are occurring in places such as Dallas, Georgia, St. Louis, and Tennessee are a direct response to violence in places like Baton Rouge. Only through collective action grounded in strong communities and transformative justice can we realize a safer world for all of us.

Our stance is not one of retreat, but of increased commitment to divestment from policing and investment in the future of Black communities. We understand that the state and the media will describe our resistance as violent, just like they will describe Black skin as such. These strategies are meant to disband our movement and to tighten the state’s grip on our lives and communities. In order to ensure the safety and security of our people in this moment, it is imperative that we move strategically and in ways that center our values.

We have been told that the duty of the police is to protect and serve our people. Meanwhile, the same officers who swear to uphold justice and dignity are not accountable to “gun control” measures and have explicitly targeted and unjustly murdered Black folks living unapologetically in their Blackness. While the right to own a weapon is celebrated as a pillar of American citizenship, gun laws do not apply equally to Black people. Philando Castile was gunned down in cold blood for carrying a firearm he legally owned. This tells us once again that Black people lack full access to citizenship and humanity in America.

The system in which we live under has waged an attack on Black bodies through social and political genocide. Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were murdered for trying to survive in a world that denied them of dignity. Mya Hall. Sandra Bland. Rekia Boyd. Betty Jones. The list goes on and on. We push to dismantle the police state and abolish the prison system.

As the state continues to uphold a status quo of anti-Black racism, we remember the words of James Baldwin: “to be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”